Today I flew to North Carolina to visit my family. Airplane rides give great opportunites for scripture study. Here are today's verses:

"Whoever sheds the blood of man
by man shall his blood be shed.
For in the image of God has God made man.

As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it."

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you-the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals-all those who came out of the ark with you, every living creature on earth.

Today I only read for 30 minutes, in 2 Chronicles 5-8. I'm sorry, but I'm just too exhausted.

Well, I took a big step today. I missed yesterday's assignment, and today I did not make up for it! I simply did one day's worth of work, as per usual. And I'm not going to feel bad about it. I'm going to keep trucking along at this nice, manageable pace.

I read about the temple that King Solomon built today. I've been through those passages beore, but I was not quite able to wrap my mind around what the temple looked like. Today I got a beter idea. Wow, that was an impressive building! It is such a shame that it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.

Here are today's verses:

Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, all the creatures that move along the ground and all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifebood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man."

This morning I reviewed the verses that I should have reviewed yesterday, then this evening I continued with my regularly scheduled study. (Yes, I realize that my new policy says not to do this, but I thought I would. Why not?)

On a related note: Today, my memorization caught up with the Bible reading I did on the first day of this project. I finally finished the eighth chapter of Genesis! It's a long way left to go, but it feels so good to know that real progress is being made!

Here are today's verses:

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his son's wives. And all the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground, and all the birds-everything that moves on the earth-came out of the ark, one kind after another. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, sacriced burnt offerings on it. God smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

I've been reflecting on why I quit memorizing the scripture for a while, and I think I have an idea.

For various reasons having to do with time management and a lack of discipline, I got behind by a day. No big deal; I just did twice as much the next day. But then I developed the habit of neglecting my studies and making it up on a fairly regular basis. Eventually, I reached the point where I was more than two days behind, and then I was sunk. Catching up seemed so impossible that I just gave up. I meant to start back, but I just kept putting it off more and more. So I wound up doing nothing at all, because I didn't like being behind.

I have decided on a new policy. If I fail to study the Bible on a given day, I won't try to make up today's study tomorrow. That will quickly become unmanageable. Instead, I will simply try again tomorrow, with the same workload as today.

Here are today's verses:

By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then remved the covering from the ark and saw that the surfae of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was completely dry. Then God said to Noah, "Come out of the ark-you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you-the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground-so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.

It is such a pleasure, now, to take some time in the evenings to decompress from the constant business of the day and study God's Word. Right now, I am reading through the book of 1st Chronicles, and you know what that means:

Lots and lots and LOTS of names!

This man was the father of that man, and that man was the father of the other man, and the other man was the father of still another man, and so on for pages and pages. I wonder how well I'm going to fare when I start memorizing these sections.

But Chronicles serves a good purpose. A lot of modern scholars try to pass off the miraculous occurrences of the Bible as fairy-tales or mythology. But Chronicles goes to great lengths to make it very clear: The Bible is history. It's very, very boring history a times. But that's the way history can sometimes be. All this stuff really happened. And since all these meticulously recorded facts are correct, so are all the really amazing things that are found in other parts of the Bible.

After forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove, to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find no place to set its feet, because there was water all over the surface of the earth, so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to Him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

I am ashamed of what I have done, for it has been many days since my last post. My habit of memorizing the Bible (or reading it) has been slipping, and I have felt a corresponding feeling that there is something missing in my life.

But thanks be to God that I have a wife who he uses for His grand devices. This morning, she said that she would like for the two of us to take our quiet times at the same times each day, in the evening. What a godsend this was! Not only am I now more able to make a designated time when I can study God's Word, but we will be able to spend more time together in the process. I couldn't be happier.

Here are today's verses, pickng up where I left off:

Now the springs of the great deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.